ISRO-NASA to jointly launch satellite to study earthquakes

Bengaluru, April 5: In a first-ever venture between the two popular space organizations-ISRO and NASA-a satellite that helps studying earthquake and its patterns will be launched.

The satellite is called NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR and is designed to make observations and measurements of ecosystem disturbance, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as tsunami, volcanoes and land slides.

However, there is some disagreement over the day of the lauch. While USA said that it was ready to launch the satellite on 2020-21, ISRO is contemplating pre-poning it.

NASA administrator Charles Frank Bolden said,"The US is providing L-Band. It will help us look at crustal deformation. We are looking for hints at earthquake detection. We cannot predict earthquake but we can advise people where it has occurred. We are hoping to launch it by 2020-21."

ISRO's AS Kiran Kumar, said that the project will not only help in understanding the seismic activity, but also help in monitoring agricultural activities in India.

Kumar further added,"The activity involves building a payload with L- and S- bands synthetic aperture radar. It's a new technology instrument. While NASA provides the L-Band component of the electronics plus the antenna, which is a huge one. ISRO will provide the S-Band and the payload will be integrated at NASA and then the payload comes back at Bangalore. It gets integrated on the satellite, which is being built and will be launched by ISRO."

"So, currently the activities are going on in full swing. Both the governments have cleared the basic mission. We are looking at a possible launch with 2021. We are trying to advance the launch and we are working towards it. As far as we are concerned the usage of this got many significant usage for our programme."

"We are very much excited about it because for the first time two of our agencies are working together on such a big scale," the ISRO chief said. He further added that both the space agencies have formed a working group and they would meet periodically.